


Moonlight When I'm Leaving

by LivingProof



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: As well they should, Barnum Worries, Gen, Phillip Angst, Phillip Carlyle Needs a Hug, everyone worries, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:44:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18874390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LivingProof/pseuds/LivingProof
Summary: Phillip can tell, as soon as he gets to the circus, that everyone knows. He sees it in the sympathetic tilt of Anne's head from where she and WD are rehearsing on one of the lower platforms. He hears it in Charles's greeting, small and sincere when it should be caustic and droll. He feels it in Lettie's stare, warm and worried while she adjusts Constantine's cape.





	Moonlight When I'm Leaving

**Author's Note:**

> Adult themes ahoy. Please see the end notes for specific warnings if you are concerned.

Phillip can tell, as soon as he gets to the circus, that everyone knows. He sees it in the sympathetic tilt of Anne's head from where she and WD are rehearsing on one of the lower platforms. He hears it in Charles's greeting, small and sincere when it should be caustic and droll. He feels it in Lettie's stare, warm and worried while she adjusts Constantine's cape.

 

Despite their obvious concern, no one raises it with him, which he considers a blessing. He is even more gratified to find his office absent one showman when he steps in and shuts the door behind him. It gives him the chance to sink into the silence, to slowly slide off his coat and deliberately hang up his hat and scarf before he sets the day's _Herald_ down softly on his desk. He eases himself into his chair, presses the paper flat with both hands, and looks down.

 

He traces the letters of a lengthy article just below the fold delicately with one hand, whispering a few of the words as he examines the title and byline. He stops there and gently taps his fingers over the print.

 

That is when, naturally, Barnum enters the office. But where there would usually be the squeal of the door being cast quickly aside, the stomp of Barnum's feet as he bustles in – boisterous voice and wide smile and extravagant new idea idea on his lips – and then the thud of the showman's jacket hitting the floor after his errant throw at the coat stand misses, there is not. Instead, there is the soft creak of the door being eased open, the muted snick of it being shut, Barnum's shuffling tread over to Phillip.

 

“So you've seen it, then?” Phillip asks quietly, gaze still lowered to the daily on his desk.

 

Barnum says nothing, just pads over until he is standing next to Phillip's chair. He shifts to sit on the desk beside the paper, one hand coming down to cover the article south of Phillip's still fingers. Print obscured, Phillip instead studies the other man's hand: long, graceful fingers; small scrape across two of his knuckles; ink stain on the outside of his thumb; blue veins tracing a path up to a broad wrist and under the sleeve of a carmine overcoat. He looks just beyond that hand and sees his own name staring back at him in black lettering.

 

Phillip waits for Barnum's inevitable questions, or indignant comments, expects a lighthearted, witty rejoinder aimed at bringing a smile to his lips, a spark to his eyes.

 

“I did,” Barnum says simply.

 

Phillip picks out the words above the showman's fingers. _A scion of a well-heeled family, at times taking a rakish pleasure in defying expectations and eschewing the conventions into which he was born._

 

“Did you know it would run today?” Barnum asks. _Catapulted into the literary mainstream in his mid-twenties with a series of choleric works, oft regarded as thinly-veiled critiques of the most stifling strictures of New York society,_ Phillip reads next to his pinky.

 

“Yes.” Phillip swallows. “Mr. Bennett was kind enough to keep me informed throughout.”

 

“When did you find out?” _A life and career almost constantly shrouded in controversy; a scandal fed by his aversion to the accolades of critics and society mavens, his disregard for the drama of dukes and duchesses, and his preference for the politics of the open streets and the brouhahas of back alleys and boudoirs,_  above Barnum's ring finger.

 

“A few days ago,” Phillip sighs tiredly.

 

“Why didn't...you didn't have to come to work, Phillip.” _His writing is well regarded in many European circles, where the risque and the profane may ascend to the sacred if depicted with a nuance that evidences the complexities of the social world an imposture,_ beside the second knuckle of Barnum's index finger.

 

“What else would I have done, PT?” Phillip mumbles.

 

“Taken some time off? A trip out of the city? I don't know. Told somebody? Told me?” _Marked by a flair for the flamboyant, a taste for the tawdry, and above all else an abiding worship of the written word,_ next to Barnum's thumb.

 

“Well, everyone knows now.” Phillip replies dully.

 

Barnum takes a shaky breath. “Yes, we do, Phillip.” _Passion, in his works, comprehends many of the worst emotions, and never strays far from the themes of trauma, and suffering, and, in a rare instance, redemption,_ just below Barnum's wrist.

 

Phillip looks mutely at the article. He picks up a finger, presses it hard to the words. Barnum gives him a moment, then gently lifts the younger man's hand and places it aside.

 

Phillip reads the full headline as Barnum carefully takes the paper and moves it from his myopic stare.

 

_Celebrated New York Author and Poet Dead at Thirty-three_

 

_A Tribute to My Dear Friend, by Phillip Carlyle_

 

“Did Bennett ask you to write this?” Barnum inquires, and his tone gives Phillip pause, brings to mind something soft as lion's fur and dangerous as wicked claws.

 

“No,” Phillip replies. “When I heard...I...I asked if I might contribute a few words. Mr. Bennett said I could write as much as I wanted.”

 

Barnum huffs out a muffled sigh at that, drums quicksilver fingers in the open space next to Phillip's lax hand. “You knew him well, I take it?”

 

“Yes,” Phillip affirms, “although our relationship was more distant since...over the past year or so.”

 

“Was he...” Barnum stops and shakes his head. “I'm sorry.”

 

“He was...ebullient,” Phillip answers Barnum's unvoiced question. “Always laughing, always glad to see a familiar face. Or an unfamiliar one. He drank and smoked and cursed like a sailor. Never a dull moment.”

 

Barnum is silent, his fingers gone tranquil.

 

“He said once...he saw himself as one of his characters. A man who lived with everything he had.” Phillip scratches a fingernail against his desk. “The brightest star, that can only burn half as long.”

 

“He...passed a few days ago?” Barnum asks, his voice low and downy-soft.

 

Phillip laughs coldly, eyes fixed on the top of his desk. “No, PT, he finished off a bottle of whiskey and then shot himself in the head with his father's revolver on Monday morning.”

 

That freezes the showman and the air in the room, hushes the sounds of the circus outside their office door.

 

“Sorry,” Phillip offers after a long minute.

 

“You don't have to be,” Barnum responds quickly. Phillip can't see the older man's face but he feels the weight of his regard, the force of his concern.

 

“But we don't talk about that sort of thing in polite company. Wouldn't be proper, you see,” Phillip mocks.

 

“I...gathered that he took his own life, Phillip,” Barnum remarks, and his fingers resume their broken cadence across Phillip's desk.

 

“Oh?” Phillip asks, genuinely curious.

 

“From the way you wrote about him. And because you didn't say...how he died.”

 

“Of course.” And Phillip shouldn't be surprised at Barnum's perceptiveness, shouldn't be surprised by much of anything the showman says or does these days.

 

“Phillip...everyone is...we're all...are you...”

 

“Am I what, PT? Am I well? Am I saddened by his passing? Am I – ” Phillip finally glances up at Barnum, feels his throat swell. Because Barnum is giving him _that_ look: chin tilted down, deep furrow between his brows, lips flat and eyes round.

 

“What?” Phillip snarls, feeling pinned by that stare, held fast by his chair, stifled by the four walls of their office. “Don't look at me like that.”

 

“Like what, Phillip?” Barnum queries, impossibly kind.

 

“Like you think I've seen this before. Like you wonder if this could have been me. If it might be, one day.” Something twists in Phillip's chest, hot and barbed, and steals the air from his lungs.

 

“Should I be worried about that?”

 

“Fuck you, PT,” Phillip snaps, bolts upright and takes a step back so his eyes are level with Barnum's. The older man doesn't move a muscle, only raises his gaze to meet Phillip's. “Is that what you expect? A tormented writer, following the primrose path of his kith and kin?” Phillip growls out.

 

“I didn't say that.”

 

“Or just another degenerate author, riding the world of his iniquitous stain?”

 

“I didn't say that, either,” Barnum counters, and those certainly weren't his words. But some voices echo down the years, too loud to ignore.

 

Phillip stands, panting, remembers cold eyes and a condescending sneer. There is no parallel between that distant recollection, however, and Barnum's face in front of him, still and calm yet clouded with concern.

 

“No,” he breathes out, and Barnum's brow finally rises. “No,” he clarifies, “you didn't say that. And you don't have to worry about...that, either.”

 

He chuckles bitterly. “My father would never permit me to borrow one of his firearms.”

 

“If that was meant to be a comfort to me, Phillip,” Barnum mutters out between clenched teeth, “it was not.”

 

“Oh,” Phillip responds. “No. It's. Right. I'm sorry.” Barnum's stare follows him as he returns to his desk, gingerly takes his seat, and looks down at his hands in his lap, the print smudges on the pads of his fingers.

 

“I wanted to ask how you were feeling, Phillip.”

 

“I...” Phillip watches his fingers twitch, feels Barnum shift toward him. “I'm fine.”

 

“Are you?” And now Barnum's even nearer, close enough for Phillip to feel the older man's breath ghost through his hair.

 

“Yes,” Phillip asserts, but his shoulders slide forward and his head drops down until his temple is pressed against Barnum's thigh.

 

“Or not,” he amends as his eyes well and his throat shuts and Barnum's steady hand comes to rest on the back of his neck.

 

“That's alright too, Phillip,” Barnum murmurs. “That's fine, too.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Saturday morning finds Phillip in an uncomfortable pew in the back of St. Peter's. He lets the Latin wash over him and watches dully as the parishioners stand and kneel, remains on his knees while his neighbors step forward to receive the blood and the body.

 

He trudges out the arched doors with the masses, and pauses on the third step as women in bustled gowns and gentlemen in stiff collars shuffle around him.

 

Barnum is standing at the foot of the stairs, dark coat, dark hat, and a light, soft smile. Phillip numbly forces his feet forward and slots under the arm Barnum has raised at his approach to press along the showman's side.

 

Phillip doesn't notice the whispers and glares, and Barnum doesn't care as he guides the young man away from the stained glass and somber faces.

 

“Is there anything you would like to do, Phillip? Or would you prefer to go back to the circus?”

 

“No.” Barnum looks surprised at that, has half-opened his mouth to respond when Phillip continues. “He wrote a lot about the city. Loved the boulevards and the back alleys. Liked to stroll along the East River. He told me he would never get tired of just walking the streets. Could we do that for a bit? Just...walk?”

 

Barnum looks up at the damp, dreary sky, the sun failing to peek through gray clouds, the darker cumuli on the horizon.

 

“It's a beautiful day for a walk, Phillip. Where shall we go first?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Off-screen suicide, spoken about in descriptive terms. 
> 
> ***
> 
> I saw Adam Sandler's tribute to the late great Chris Farley a few weeks ago on SNL, and this is what came to mind. Go figure. 
> 
> So then I decided to read through nineteenth century obituaries (as one does) for more inspiration. The best one I came across was this from the New York Tribune: 
> 
> “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.”
> 
> Well. At least he left an impression? 
> 
> Very curious to hear what you all thought. Thanks for reading.


End file.
